The first step in creating meaningful, long-term, sustainable innovation in any organization is to recognize that cultures cause outcomes. And if this is true, bad cultures will cause bad outcomes. And if this is true, it further follows that bad leadership causes bad cultures, which in turn cause bad outcomes. The challenge in innovation is not projects, and initiatives, and programs and so on: the challenge is how human beings can change their way of thinking and the way they lead so as to foster innovation. It really is that simple.

Or, maybe not.

Leadership in innovative organizations operates on multiple, often contradictory levels. An innovative leader is simultaneously both leader and role model, both doing and causing. If you are leading innovation, you are simultaneously encouraging risk-taking, and acting as steward of your organization's resources; you are advocating change, while preserving your organization's legacy, history and current success; you are thinking both about a strong current performance and a future, likely different state. All at the same time. It can be a dizzying state of being.

Leaders who operate in this state of contradiction share many common traits and practices and habits. These shared attributes are like cardinal points of navigation, places you can return to in moments of uncertainty. They can be returned to as centering points, and they can be taught, nurtured and encouraged. And with effective powerful leadership and role models, these attributes of leadership almost magically, over time, morph into systemic attributes of an organization. And that is when innovation states are achieved.

Accountability

Accountability for the innovative leader has little to do with what we normally think of as "job accountabilities." Accountability in innovation is a powerful way of becoming one with your organization. Although that may sound just a little vague or warm and fuzzy, it's actually a very pragmatic outcome or state. Being accountable is not a list of tasks and outcomes and goals and objectives that are the sum of things you are expected to do. Those are responsibilities, the table stakes of good performance in your job. Holding yourself accountable (or, better, being in a state of accountability) means that you embrace the entirety of the organization you belong to as yours. You hold yourself accountable for the organization's success, and the success of every single person within the organization.

One way to think about this is that leaders who are fully accountable are those who have wholly and unconditionally bonded with their organization, and this leads them to a belief and intentional faith in the intrinsic value and meaning of what they are committed to. It seems difficult to imagine a powerful state of being accountable without an equally powerful state of believing in what you do. Innovation in particular -- in individuals and in organizations -- needs energy and drive. Broad and deep individual accountability, along with a deep understanding of what really constitutes innovation culture, is a powerful driver of innovation.

Self-awareness

An innovation culture is not generally a tidy culture, nor is it conducive to predictability ; the ride can be fast and unsettling, breeding a lot of uncertainty. Leaders immersed in true innovation must be able to accommodate this uncertainty, and not a little personal self-doubt. Self awareness allows you to understand your own weaknesses and failures, and doing so means that you have more empathy for others. Developing the ability to be comfortable in your own skin -- warts and all -- means failure, random events, disappointments and all the many daily surprises innovation can bring will not be about you -- they will be about the organization.

And just as it is with accountability, as individual leaders nurture their own self-awareness, they will nurture it in others. And then the organization itself becomes one that values, encourages and understands the returns that emerge from broadly distributed self-awareness.

Being ritual

Rituals form the foundation of life, giving us a sense of permanence and of stability. So too, all organizations benefit from the power and influence of shared celebrations. Rituals create a sense of belonging and alignment to common goals. Leaders of innovative organizations are mindful of the power of ritual to increase performance, to create loyalty and to help carry individuals through rough organizational times. They understand that the celebration and recognition intrinsic to ritual is the single biggest lever for organizational alignment. Powerful leaders are not so much practicing ritual as they are being ritual.

But ritual plays a different and especially important role in highly innovative organizations, and a strong leader of innovation knows this. Because of the sense of constant change and disruption associated with innovation, there is a great need for grounding, for creating both the sense and reality of a constant thread of organizational history, which of course in turn implies a more likely and reliable future. There's a difference between established, legacy rituals which honor past accomplishments and past history, and the process of creating new rituals to bind up the present. In the face of rapid change - even rapid desired and encouraged change -- an effective innovation leader encourages the process of ritualizing the human parts of an organization. Absent a process of ritualizing, change and failure can be unsettling; with ritual, they are celebrated.

Contradiction

The most challenging aspect of innovation is contradiction. Over time all organizations naturally arc toward a status quo state, a need to optimize and harvest the return on investment in existing business models and strategies. Generally, the more successful an organization, the less there is an appetite for innovation. A strong leader knows that there is a profound organizational inertia that competes with change, and is mindful of the conflict this can cause in other individuals. The conflict arises from contrary expectations. We may want individuals to take more risk (as part of being innovative), but at the same discourage risk institutionally. We may want everyone to trust more, to move faster, to get more done, but we also want verification, documentation and i's dotted and t's crossed.

An innovation leader knows this, understands the conflict and -- more important -- knows how this kind of whipsaw contradiction can leave individuals within an organization disoriented and uncertain. Accordingly, a committed leader will work to ensure transparency, openness and disclosure, so that conflict is a shared problem, not an individual burden. Contradiction then becomes more of an opportunity, rather than a barrier.

With a little luck and perseverance, the consistent application of these ideas can lead to an organization that is resilient, quick to adapt to change and opportunity, and which values human beings. Or, in other words, a highly innovative organization.